Once upon a time, during the Bracks’ Government Victoria prided itself on being a national leader in innovation and policy development. Recently, however, the Brumby Government is said to have become a policy backwater, better known for its failures and dead ends than for positive outcomes.

The suggestion that Victorian policy development may have become an exercise in self deception prompts me to wonder what the track record is in workers compensation, specifically in return to work.  WorkSafe Vic – actually its real name is still the Victorian WorkCover Authority (VWA) – is guided by a board with a unique composition.  The current mix is a flow on from the late 1990’s when the VWA was a financial basket case.  It required specialist attention to get out of trouble and did so in a remarkable turn-around over a few short years through prudent investment in the booming global economy and by shuffling a significant percentage of long term claimants off the system (and likely onto other systems).  Now the VWA is a good half decade beyond any prospect of financial collapse (despite the GFC), yet the experience base of the VWA board is still almost exclusively financial.  Other states require their boards to be drawn from a cross section of stakeholders – employers, unions, treaters.  But Victoria has a narrow selection of bureaucrats and money people.  How have they performed on the policy front?

First a disclaimer.  I suffer from an incurable affliction – it is the unshakable view that working with injured employees is a bottom up process.  It consists of providing opportunities - treatment, money, emotional support, ergonomics and boundaries – on a very personal basis, one that does everything possible to enable them to make positive choices.  To take control of their own recovery and get back to life as it was, or better. 

Based on this I have no patience with legislation, systems, authorities, people, projects or processes in workers compensation that operate from the top down.  In my view any exercise of authority that does not stem from hands on experience in the field, that is not motivated and guided by the needs of those who are subject to it, is simply ignorance masquerading as vanity.  The team at RTWMatters edit me to something like manners, but the symptoms and intolerance remain.

Four or five years ago when flush with investment returns the VWA Board set up a Return To Work Division with the objective of leading the country within five years.  More recently, in harder times, the board’s commitment to this division is rumoured to be falling away.

Apart from failing to actually lead the country in RTW – Victoria's return to work performance appears to be declining (see our analysis here), at best - according to WorkSafe’s own research - it is holding its own. Hard to tell why it has not achieved its objectives, but it might have something to do with the fact that few officers in the RTW Division have any hands on experience in actually returning people to work.

The Division has also suffered fading success with the ‘Employers Return To Work Networks’.  The VWA developed these ‘deliver the message’ events to educate and support RTW Coordinators.  I've been told they did so after visiting existing successful peer networks to see how it was done it e.g. the Local Government RTW Co-ordinators’ network – a recurrent face to face meeting of peers convened to help each other and discuss common issues.  However, WorkSafe’s version is not face to face, nor is it a peer network.  Instead it is a face-the-front-and-listen to yet another PowerPoint presentation arrangement.  The understandably declining audiences of RTW Coordinators suffer boredom inadequately compensated by the free cup of coffee, and don't get the help in their work they anticipated.

And then there is the RTW Fund. This was a VWA board decision to spend umpteen million dollars over three years (now concluded) via grants to a range of excellent organisations and projects intended to improve RTW.  The Fund arose after the VWA's CEO Greg Tweedley toured the world looking for a good RTW system to bring home, but couldn't find one. The purpose of the Fund was to create our own, I heard him say.  What happened? The funded participants were frustrated by bad management and ill defined objectives. I know, we applied, got a grant, and did a project.  In the 35 years I have dealt with funding agencies - in many contexts and at all levels of government - the RTW Fund was the standout champion worst ever.  They didn’t know what they were doing, and did it badly.  There has been no follow through, no sensible use has been made of the many projects and the excellent work done with their funding.

More recently there is a workplace health initiative.  Research shows that the way to improve workplace health is via a partnership approach (see here & here & here & here).  Sit down with the employer and staff, discuss needs and options, then give material support to the implementation of a plan that involves everyone, from the shop floor to senior management in healthy activity. It improves health, workplace culture, lowers claim rates. The research proves it.

The VWA’s work health initiative is ‘WorkHealth Checks’.  The project sends service providers into organisations to do basic health checks.  This is an ice age away from a participative partnership approach between an authority and the workplace to improve health. Despite WorkSafe’s bold attempts to talk the program up employers have shown a marked disinterest in participating.  Simply put ‘WorkHealth Checks’ is a project that one might expect to be implemented by a Board made up of financial experts who are without hands on experience in the field.

Considering the major policy initiatives that the VWA has undertaken in the last half decade the criticism that Victoria has become a policy backwater, and its own greatest liability, appears to have some credibility, at least where return to work is concerned.